


Casus Belli

by AdamantiumDragonfly



Series: Casus Belli [3]
Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Double Agents, Espionage, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Family Secrets, Heavy Angst, Miriam is a sneaky bitch and ginny is tired of it, Mystery, OSS is my bitch now, Post-World War II, Slow Burn, Spies & Secret Agents, Tragedy, War, World War II, World War Two, band of brothers keeps giving, in times of war we fuck shit up, pandemic project 2.0, secret society of spies is taken down by a single cat, war ain't for the feint of heart
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:28:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29248818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdamantiumDragonfly/pseuds/AdamantiumDragonfly
Summary: "In times of war, you do what you must, become what you must. Some embrace it, some try to resist it, and others abuse it. I am guilty of all three."Virginia Carroll has been fighting her whole life, against herself and against what she is drawn to become. Burdened by her mother's scars and haunted by the shadows of a war gone by, Virginia, codenamed Eris, is pushed to the brink in Normandy risking life and discovery to gather intelligence.Her orders change and Virginia must embrace Eris fully to survive Europe. She can't afford to let her regrets and fears weigh her down as the Airborne falls to her rescue. She most certainly can't be distracted as she is recalled from the front and the real work begins.In times of war, you do what needs to be done and Virginia knows it all too well. But the longer she fights, she begins to wonder: at the end of the war, will she still be Virginia Carroll or will Eris, weighed by her mother's past, be all that's left?|| Originally published as A Little Discord. This is the edited\revised version ||
Relationships: Joseph Liebgott/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Casus Belli [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1861873
Kudos: 6





	1. Disclaimer/Author's Note

This story is a work of pure fiction, loosely based on the character portrayal of Easy Company in the HBO show, Band of Brothers. This is, in no way, meant to represent the real men, their real stories, or the real historical events. I have endeavored to remain historically accurate in my own additions and writing whenever possible. You will find that this story, while a Band of Brothers fanfic and OFC story, is not based purely on the context of the show.

Virginia Carroll, inspired in name and action by the real OSS agent Virginia Hall, is a character of my own invention. Her missions, actions, and story are figments of my own imagination and created purely for enjoyment and art.

My portrayal of OSS agents and organizations, as well as espionage rings in World War 1, are as accurate as I could but there are creative liberties taken and they will be noted in the text.

Agents were typically given aliases that would blend into their destination. Eris, Felix, Enyo, and any of my other agent names are chosen purely for creative reasons. (I also think they are badass).

This story was originally posted as A Little Discord in April 2020 on Wattpad/Ao3. I have since edited, revised, and rewritten elements of this story. Any changes made will likely be noted in the author's notes at the end of the chapter, as well as any historical comments or further supporting research.

Content warning: graphic scenes of fighting, death, blood, and gore. period typical sexism, Anti-Semitism, and emotional trauma throughout. I will do my best to provide specific trigger warnings as they approach but I would like to issue this blanket statement: This is a story about war and I will be diving into the psychological, physical, and emotional repercussions of this subject.

||Author's Note||

I started A Little Discord, or Casus Belli, during the first lockdown in 2020. I was a quarantined college student who was trapped with a history buff and an enormous amount of undesignated free time at my disposal. With that time and knowledge at my disposal, I wrote A Little Discord, a story of a spy who was scared to end her war.

Now, almost a year later, I'm back to bring the story that I wanted to tell the first time. I'm going deeper in this version and Casus Belli will provide some insight into Enyo, Melinoe, and Moros (characters in my discontinued Oneshot series, Lady Blood).

I hope you all enjoy.


	2. melinoe - 1915

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
> 
> "Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
> 
> "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
> 
> "You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."

"I don't suppose we should be left alone as we are. No oversight, no handlers to monitor. Three operatives running loose on the other side of the Rhine. The only operatives this side of the Rhine. It provides an elitist feeling, eliciting a kind of pride.

We had heard of the other operatives before being sent into the field, kings, and queens of intelligence, we were told. Enyo thinks we are no different from the others but I think we are better. We have to be.

There is royalty among the spy networks in France and the Netherlands but we, we are the gods of British intelligence. Like the Olympians, our espionage is bound by more than loyalty, our wrists tied with the secrets we keep. Shed blood holds us together and we will see this war through. I'm sure of it."

recovered from the field journal of Operative S. G. Codenamed Melinoe. Dated: July 18th 1915


	3. Better alone than in bad company

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
> 
> "Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
> 
> "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
> 
> "You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."

Sainte Marie-Du-Mont, Normandy, France

April 15th, 1944.

Germans were everywhere but that was nothing new. Their uniforms were an ever-present sight in the streets of Sainte Marie-Du-Mont and its surrounding fields. I had never had much trouble from any of them, nor had they tried to start anything in my presence. Their role in this occupation seemed to be that of silent sentries, waiting for a larger prize. I wasn't particularly worried about their business here or my few interactions with them. As far as they knew, as far as anyone could tell, I was just another French girl.

The coastline was full of Nazis; tanks and trucks were always rumbling across the roads, parting the few people who wandered the streets. The soldiers would flirt and play their power as the occupier and I play the occupied, resigned, and worn but keeping a wary eye. Their poor attempts at French were degrading more than threatening and they didn't think I understood their German. In the end, they would walk away, laughing and I would slip my knife back into my pocket. They weren't here just for a seaside jaunt and neither was I.

This Nazi who approached me, his uniform's medals gleaming in the sunshine, was different. Two years of the same behavior and you could notice the outliers. He didn't wait for a villager to cross his path. He was marching right towards me, a destination made very clear by the look in his dark eyes. He looked serious, unlike the usual teasing and humiliating. I looked around the street, the cafe's outdoor tables were mostly empty. I was the only diner in the square. The villagers knew that when the Nazis were out, you stayed in. I had learned this in my first week in France; Simone had grilled it into me. I couldn't risk any suspicion but today I had to be out and it seemed my break in schedule hadn't gone unnoticed.

Alright, I thought. Take a deep breath. As far as anyone knew in this town I was just Irene Leblanc, some indistinct French girl who knew to follow the rules and had just lost track of the time. They didn't need to know that my watch had grown warm in my hand and my eyes were searching for a very specific face.

"Good morning," He said in heavily accented French, stopping just beside my table. My coffee cup was half-empty and cooling rapidly but I hadn't been here for breakfast. I dipped my head in reply.

"Why are you out here all alone?" He knew of the French's schedule. Here I was, breaking it. I had been here for nearly two years and it was obvious what a breach in routine would cause here. I looked around at the empty streets as if just noticing their barren state. As if just noticing that I was alone, though the thought had been plaguing my existence since I had crossed the French border.

"My morning coffee, sir," I said, looking up at him, smiling. "I do enjoy some time to myself."

He didn't seem satisfied with that answer. The best lies come from partial truth. I did like to spend some time on my own and I did have coffee.

"Are you waiting for someone?"

I shook my head. "As I said, I'm enjoying some time with myself. I live with my aunt, you see. Many children, very loud."

I laughed softly, trying to seem nonchalant as if being questioned by a German soldier didn't make my palms clammy with sweat. His continued gaze was starting to make me uneasy. I knew what I had to do, get him out of my hair in time for the informant to get here and deliver the message. Nosy officers were a part of the territory here but I had never crossed paths with one quite so insistent.

"I see," He nodded, looking up the empty streets again, before leaning close and whispering. "I suggest that you go enjoy your alone time somewhere else."

The breach of my personal space made me seriously reconsider my plans. Fighting him would have been possible, there was only one of him. I looked up at him through my lashes, in what he would think of as a demure glance but I was sizing him up. He wasn't much larger than I was. Clay and Davis had been fond of wrestling before Mollie had convinced them that I was a lady. I prided myself on being able to keep up with the male trainees. I knew I could take him but there was too much of a risk of being seen. I was still in the middle of the village even if the streets were empty. Any number of townspeople or hidden soldiers could be watching us from around corners or behind curtains. My informant could be watching.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another uniformed officer walking down the street toward us. My skill in dirty fighting didn't have a chance to bare its teeth today, unfortunately.

Two was a crowd, I decided and nodded. "I will, sir."

The soldier, whose sleeve declared him a captain, gave me a wry smile and straightened. He retreated to join the approaching German, watching me with a careful eye.

I drained the last of my coffee -sludgy and cold- and dug into my purse for a few crumpled bills that I left on the table. I gathered my purse and gloves and started to retreat with dignity. My mind was racing as I passed the pair of Nazis, trying to reformulate the plan. I had to get a message to my informant. If I had learned one thing in my time in France was to, above all else, protect the information.

I wasn't surprised when the man shouted after me. My heart sank into my shoes but I wasn't surprised. I tried to keep surprise out of my mind in the field. Turning on my heel, I faced them, trying to look scared enough for believability. It wasn't an act, though I could hear Miriam shouting in my ear to stop looking like a scared rabbit.

"You have not been here long?" The first asked.

I shook my head. "Two years."

Keep the lie as close to the truth. Felix had been good at it but I had been better.

"You live with your aunt," he said. It wasn't a question but I nodded in response. He stepped closer, the second officer following like a large, muscular shadow. My chances of overpowering both of them were slim but not terrible. "Who is your aunt?"

"Simone Gachot. Over on Rue De Joly." I replied.

They would likely know who she was. They had been knocking on every door more than once and searching for resistance intelligence in the dead of night. I had to start hiding my equipment in an abandoned barn, underneath the floorboards. It was inconvenient at best. I might have to start hiding my informants, I thought, squirming under their gaze.

"And you are?"

"Irene Leblanc," I said, the name still felt strange on my tongue, like the French that I had to speak. "I am from Cassis."

Though my legend was foolproof and my mind knew it well, I couldn't help but think to myself the truth. Who I was really. Virginia Carroll, from Chicago. But she didn't have a place in France.

"What brings you to the north of France?" The first officer asked. His questions didn't bother me, they weren't the first to ask. I had carefully practiced my answers for months so the story fell from my lips like water, Felix drilling them into my mind before allowing me to leave his sight.

"My mother sent me to help my aunt Simone with her brood of children, while she stayed in Cassis. She was afraid of the fighting in the Mediterranean and wanted me to be as far as possible."

Leaning conspiratorially, I whispered. "She's always been a worrier."

Again, truth in the lie. My mother's worries had seemed irrational but now I regretted all the times I thought it was a waste of my time. An irritation.

The captain who had interrupted my coffee seemed satisfied with my answer as if he had heard it before. Maybe he had not been concerned with my origins as his companion who now took a step closer. A hand went into his jacket pocket and I tensed. My hand shifted ever so slightly to my waist, ready to slip my knife out of my cleverly concealed sheath but I relaxed when he pulled out a photo, not a weapon.

Looking back, I wish I had slit his throat. Slit both of their throats and run. But killing is harder to stomach in daylight.

"Have you ever seen this woman?" The second officer asked, offering me the photo.

I had seen that woman. Every day when I looked in the mirror. Thankfully the photo was caught with my head turned away, leaving the only definable feature the birthmark on my right collar bone. The birthmark that now threatened to burn through my shirt in conviction.

I looked up at the officers and shook my head. "Never. Who is she?"

The lie fell so easily from my lips I almost convinced myself. That was the mark of a good agent, I had been told: believing that you were nothing but the story they had crafted for you. I almost didn't question it but there were so many thoughts rattling in my head it was hard to keep the lie fixed in place. Why would they think I was here? They had no reason to suspect Irene or anyone in St. Marie Du Mont. And that photograph, though gone from my gaze, was burned into the darkest corner of my mind. Skirt mid-swish and head turned away carefully.

"A suspicious person. If you see that marking, you will report her." The first officer said, shoving the photo back at his fellow and glaring at me. I nodded, though turning myself in seemed counterproductive.

"Of course sirs," I said. I gestured back over my shoulder at the road I had been headed for. "Am I free to go?"

Something in the second officer's eyes wanted to say no but the first officer just nodded. They couldn't keep me longer if all they did was suspect me. Suspicion wasn't much to go on but then again, we were occupied. Sheep don't suspect wolves until their teeth are around their throats. I dipped my head in thanks and turned, listening to their retreating German and my hurried footfalls.

"Do you think she was lying?" The first, the one I had convinced at the cafe, asked.

"I don't know. Keep an eye on her, Wagner." The second said.

I refused to run, even though I wanted to so very badly. My shoes kept up a steady pace on the cobblestones all the way back to my place of residence. My informant was surely approaching and I needed to know why they were clearing the streets. In my two years in Normandy, I had never been told to clear the streets. Trucks would come in and out but nothing so important that locals couldn't see its arrival. The German army seemed to like reminding the French who had the power with their parades of weapons and might. But if they were shipping something new and there was suspicion of espionage, surely they would clear the streets. But what could be that secret?

Gripping my purse tighter in my palm, I sped up my pace to a brisk walk. That much I would allow myself. Surprise, fear, and frustration were dangerous things for an agent but certainty was not. I felt assured about one thing only, my feet tapping loudly against the street's pavers. I needed to talk to my landlady.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N
> 
> I am dropping the first nine chapters of Casus Belli in what I call "Pre-Day". Let's consider this pregaming D-Day, shall we?
> 
> I wrote this story originally last February but I have refreshed it for 2021. For another Band of Brothers OC story, check out my fic, Under the Banner written with Silmarilz1701. I write for Zhanna and I would love for you to check it out :)


	4. a disaster seldom comes alone

Sainte Marie-Du-Mont, Normandy, France

April 15th, 1944.

Simone was not happy.

You could tell by the way she threw a pot into the sink, cracking a glass into shards and rounding on me with white-hot fury in her eyes. She wouldn't kill me in front of her children, for that I was lucky. Simone's voice was carefully controlled anger, that didn't quite match the force with which she threw the kitchenware, as she told the two gathered at the table to run along. I tried to shake my head at Linette and Max, begging them not to leave me with the fury of their mother but they only laughed, obeying Simone's bidding. She threw me into the linen closet and stepped inside after me, slamming the door shut. In the darkness, I didn't need to see her face to know she was angry. At me. At the Nazis. At the OSS for placing me in her care.

It hadn't been my idea and I knew Simone didn't blame me for the war or for the occupation. But I did bring an element of danger into her life, there was no denying it. She had taken me in, a fresh agent with little to no field experience. I had been told to lie low. Simone had shown me how to do that. Her own children didn't question my presence. To Max, Linette, and Lillie, I really was their cousin Irene from the southern coast.

"Why are you not meeting your informant?" She hissed in stuttering English. "Do you know how long it took us to get him here safely?"

Simone was a woman of few words but her ability to get information and people was unprecedented. She didn't need to speak to get men and women on the side of the resistance. Most of Normandy knew to come to Simone's small home, just off the square, with any information of the Nazis. Farmers would come, spilling secrets across the kitchen table of men in uniforms assembling along the coastline, building a line of fortifications. The Nazis were building a wall of forces between Normandy and the channel. From my place in the garden, tucked underneath the open window, I knew the locals thought they were being closed in but I didn't think so. The Nazis wanted to keep something out.

"I was cleared off the streets. The Germans are bringing something into town, I know it." I said, quickly jumping to my own defense. I had learned after two years in Simone's home that her fury was a fate worse than the Germans.

Simone huffed a breath. This wasn't good for anyone, particularly the informant that she had spent all winter communicating with. Some old Great War contact, back when France had been riddled with trenches, and the spies who operated the network were a different breed. Simone had told me many times that when she had been a girl, a young teen with only wings on her feet and hidden messages in her skirt, that being a spy was harder. I'm not just a spy, I would mutter to myself. I am an agent.

"The messenger is going to be caught unawares. You have to find him before they do."

I nodded. My whole time in France was coming to fruition. Months from now, there was going to be something big. Everyone knew it. The French knew it, finding excuses to leave town, to move to the countryside, or finding ways out of France. Simone knew it, her informants rustling like leaves in the wind. Even the Germans knew it, their transports had been more frequent, bringing in men and weapons. If the informant got caught, my chances of a successful report to Madrid would be dashed. And if I could find out why the Germans were clearing the streets, what they were bringing in that was so important, maybe I could slide in something to please my superiors. I needed to be on their good side before I dropped the bomb of the photograph.

"Also," I said, steeling myself for the flame of her temper that was sure to come. "They have a photo of me."

"What?" Simone's gasp was hot on my face and I grimaced, smelling the sherry that was heavy on her breath. She always loved to drink, especially now as the Germans occupation of Saint Marie Du Mont increased in length. Surely here, she would make the speech about how a spy in her day would never have dared to be photographed. "How did you make it back?"

"They only caught my shoulders. I had turned my head, but, " I said, unbuttoning my blouse to show my collarbone in the dim lighting offered by the dusty lightbulb. "They got my birthmark."

This was worse than them capturing my face, which could have been chalked up to a resemblance or a doppelganger. But the chances of someone else having a birthmark on their collarbone at the same place I did was slim. And from the look on her face, Simone knew this.

She had been kind to me, a valuable asset, and a trusted ally of the Resistance and the OSS. She had been several decades into retirement and I had endangered her. I had endangered her children, who I could hear playing out in the garden, who thought me a part of their family. My mission had jeopardized everything she had here.

"I would never have-" She started to say, a teasing glimmer in her eye that tried to mask the fear that I saw firmly planting itself.

"I know, I know. You never would have let this happen. But I'm going to find the informant. I'm going to find out what they are bringing into town. And I'm going to tell Madrid about the photo." I told my landlady, trying to infuse as much confidence as I could into the words, making it seem like I knew what I was doing. She nodded, though I could still see the fear in her eyes.

We were all dancing with death in this town and it was worse for her. Her children were here, her life was here. I knew that my parents would never face the backlash of my actions here. If I was discovered, my family would live. Simone's would see the gun squad.

I laid a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze, letting her out of the linen closet. "It's going to be fine. I know what I'm doing."

I'm an OSS agent for Christ's sake, I thought to myself. I should know what I'm doing. I started down the hallway towards the front door, trying to draw some semblance of a plan together.

Simone seemed to be reassured but as I reached for the door, to let myself back into the Nazi-ridden streets, she whispered. "The photo, how did they get it?"

I looked back over my shoulder to meet her gaze. It was a question that I had been asking myself. There was only one place that photo could have been taken and how the Germans had gotten their hands on it was beyond me.

"I have no idea," I admitted and let myself out.


	5. the eye looks but the mind sees

Sainte Marie-Du-Mont, Normandy, France

April 15th, 1944

By the grace of whatever deity that watched over me, I managed to slip back into the main square and into the tall steepled church in the center of the town. The knowledge of that photo hung like a funeral shroud over me and would continue to follow me, an omen of misfortune as I tried to do my work. The chapel was empty; pews upright in solitary vigil and the air was deathly quiet as I skittered up the steps to the bell tower, a hand reaching into my purse.

There was much that I had to hide within my handbag, all in concealed pockets so as to avoid suspicion. The stylish leather clutch was privy to more than a few secrets and one of the only useful pieces of my ensemble as a French villager. My pumps clattered against the wooden steps no matter how carefully I trod. The secret I so desired was at the bottom, my fingers slipping into the hidden fold and withdrawing the item: a small Kodak camera that was cleverly concealed as a matchbox.

I needed to get photos of whatever they were bringing into town. I had alerted the informant of my new location, so as to avoid suspicion and their arrest. I wasn't afraid of the officers but I was afraid of what they would do with the package I was due to receive. With as much stealth as I could, I had left a small slip of paper on the table before running to the cover of the church's cloisters. I had used my mother's lessons in cryptography and the training of my OSS superiors to leave a simple note: Confess before your god.

Praying to my own god that the informant knew of my meaning, I ran out of stairs and had to continue up the ladder to the little loft in the bell tower. It provided a bird's eye view of the whole town of Sainte-Marie-Du-Mont, the English Channel, and German battery to the east and to the south, the rolling fields, and a dark smudge of the barn scarred by fire some years ago. I knew I would have to make a visit there before the night was over but right now, I was more concerned by the German's special cargo.

I had been in Normandy for two years and I had come to predict and understand the patterns of the village and the occupation. It was militaristic and punctual. But the movement below was quite irregular. All along the main roads, shutters were closed and curtains were drawn. I hadn't seen the streets this quiet in a long time, even under the usual midday lockdown. The whole town was holding its breath, waiting in anticipation for the shoe to drop and the carnage to begin. I knelt beside the bell, the shadow of the structure giving me a safe view of the world below me. I knew that I would have one good chance at this. Being an agent was all about opportunity and I couldn't miss this one.

I had been told that my placement in Saint-Marie-Du-Mont was vital. Vital to discovering German movements on the coast of Normandy. Vital to the war effort. Vital to the OSS and SOE and every other intelligence agency that had banded together in this unprecedented force of espionage.

"All right Virginia," I whispered to myself, trying to draw on the girl who had entered France two years ago. The girl who hadn't felt the threat of Simone or the Gestapo breathing down her neck. Who still held onto whatever shred of innocence that had survived her journey to France. "You can do this."

I knew my job, I knew my mission. Hell, I'd been doing it for two years, I should years. Two years in France, being someone I'm wasn't. Two years sending rolls of film and stolen paper along the network to years. I had started to forget my name, what English sounded like. What I sounded like speaking , I couldn't be Virginia R. Carroll, daughter of Allen and Miriam. Here, Eris was the only thing that could survive and she didn't like to be forgotten.

My duty here was vital. My service was necessary, or so I had convinced myself. I had made the decision to train for this. I had trained hard for this, I had worked hard for this. My thoughts drifted back to the photo, my birthmark. I had just glimpsed the fleeting thought of being compromised. My mission would have been in jeopardy. My life didn't matter but the mission, the information, the package I was to be given, that mattered. I had flirted with discovery and I couldn't let it happen again. I wouldn't get this opportunity again and I couldn't let my own failures ruin it all.

The rumble of a heavy engine shook the floorboards of my perch, unsettling the dust that coated my nylons. Peering around the edge of the window sill, I raised my camera and peered through the viewfinder, studying the road.

I had been watching the Germans' movements for months now, they had been driving trucks, wagons, and tanks up and down these streets. These machines were familiar in sound by now, I had even learned to recognize the difference between sizes of trucks from three streets over. This proved valuable when it rained, allowing me to stay undercover and mark down the models of the trucks for my reports without ever laying eyes on them. That was a secret that my superiors in Madrid could never know and I planned to keep it that way.

This sound was not familiar. It was louder, heavier than anything I had ever heard before. As the shaking grew in power, I watched through the viewfinder as the truck wheezed around the corner. It was shaking under the weight of its load, a heavy machine that I had never seen before.

There were dozens of models of Anti-Aircraft on the Atlantic Sea wall, I had been carefully cataloging them for months now. But this one was twice the size of the Flak 38 and from the groaning of the truck, it was massive in weight. My finger trembled as I snapped as many photos as I could.

I cursed under my breath, lowering the camera to see the beast of a gun with my own eyes. The streets had been cleared for this behemoth to be towed through. Surely this couldn't be its final resting place. I had heard whispers of great Allied force gathering to push through the Atlantic wall of German armaments but Sainte-Marie-Du-Mont couldn't be under suspicion for a possible landing zone. There was no real threat of an Allied invasion. The German artillery unit here was just a precaution. This gun was just passing through.

Madrid would need to hear about this, I decided and snapped a few more photos before watching the wheezing truck and its heavy load around the corner. I slid back down the ladder, the wood pricking my palm as I struggled to replace the camera in my handbag. My pumps still clattered against the stone floor as I slipped across the chapel to where the confessional was placed. I stepped into the small chamber and sank to the bench, catching my breath and listening to the retreating engine.

I heard the door to the church open and through the wooden screen, saw a slight figure enter the chapel. I knew that if it was the informant, he had gotten my message. How he had managed to enter the town without being spotted in the empty streets was impressive. The footsteps approached and I heard the shuffle of feet on the floor of the second booth.

"Bonjour," The voice was soft and low but his French was slightly accented that only a trained ear could hear. "I have come to confess."

"You have come to the right place," I said, there was still a chance this was not the informant. Suspicion was how spies stayed alive. Suspect everyone, even yourself. My hand slipped under my skirt to rest on the holster concealed on my thigh, just in case. "What ails you?"

"A female priest?" The man said. I could see his outline through the screen. Tall, broad, and much larger than I. He sounded older than I had anticipated but if Simone knew this man from her courier days, I knew that this was a seasoned spy. "How unique."

Simone had never failed to remind me how differently they had operated in the Great War. Between trenches and mustard gas, they were just lone patriots, with nothing more than the lies on their tongues and the secrets they kept close to their chests. Simone had sounded proud of the chaos she had wrought and disappointed at my chain of command. If this man was anything like my landlady, the danger of my discovery could be an added reason for distaste.

"I am no priest," I admitted. The only thing I had was the rolls of film in my purse and that photo, in German hands. "Now, what do you need?"

The man cleared his throat. "I have the requested information. It cost me many good men."

I nodded. "Thank you for your sacrifice, it was vital to the mission."

The words tasted sour on my tongue, emotionless and pointless but what else could I say? I'm sorry that your men died for a single slip of information. That didn't seem to cover it. If I was being honest, I didn't feel that it was worth it. But perhaps things had been different in Simone's glory days. Perhaps my mother knew the pride that she was always going on about.

We were told we would be saving lives by spying on the Germans. How did more seem to be killed when we did our jobs?

"How is your mission, agent?" The man asked. This was normal. Just a nicety that would be delivered to the main command, as a way of confirming the agent's status. This was the first time I had been able to speak with an agent in months, hear others' voices, and not worry about saying too much or endangering them. It was a relief.

"It has taken an interesting turn," Simone had told me that back in her days of espionage they went by codenames alone. No agents. Just people who couldn't fight as soldiers did: women, children, and those who were deemed unfit to fight.

"The anti-aircraft?"

"Yes, I said, listening to the contact's clothes rustle as he stood, a thick overcoat that only added to his imposing silhouette. "I will have to take it down,"

"You sound apprehensive, agent," The contact sounded amused. "Don't you want to fight?"

I froze, my words stalling in my throat.

"You'll never see a war, Ginny,"

"I suppose I didn't think I'd see much action in Normandy," I admitted.

"I haven't been able to fight in many years," He said, almost wistfully. He spoke about war the same way Lawson and my father did, almost regretful, but there was greed in his tone. A hunger that was too selfish to be spoken in this holy air.

"I have a request, agent,"

"Yes?"

"Stir up some trouble for me," he said, shutting the door of his confessional. "Discord among the enemy ranks is a spy's best weapon. Can you do that for me?"

I smiled. He would never see my face to know that I was nodding but I did anyway.

"I will," I promised. This faceless man, the only contact I had been in the same room within months, would never see my face. It was for safety, for concealment. You couldn't identify an informant if you had never seen them. But just being able to hear a fellow spy's voice was encouraging. He spoke of the war possessively. Like he had made it his own. I didn't think I had made this war mine but it had curled its cold fingers around me, long before my feet had touched European soil, claiming me as its own. I hadn't sought a war to fight and I certainly didn't relish in it but there was a job to do. My own discomfort didn't have a place here. And that strife he spoke of. I was certain I could get the job done.

I waited for his footsteps to leave the church before leaving the confessional. The contact had left the small cylinder on the seat, the cool metal was smooth under my fingertips as I slipped it into my pocket.


	6. There is no little enemy

Sainte Marie-Du-Monte, Normandy, France

April 16th, 1944. 3 am

The anti-aircraft was housed overnight under a tarp in a heavily guarded section of the German battery. Such fortifications were common along the coast of Normandy. I had watched their construction from my bell tower, studying and marking them carefully on my map. Madrid would surely have a detailed array of such outposts. I had spent a particularly careful hour watching the movements of this battery. There were two guards on a three-hour shift, exactly 5 minutes between each shift change. The pattern was set and I knew they wouldn't be likely to change it. My window of time was small but manageable.

I had slipped home to the home on Rue de Joly and told Simone that I would be out late. She had taken my night's plans as a good sign and had promised to leave the back door unlocked. Curfew was at sunset, so I departed as the sky began to turn pink and purple like a fresh bruise. My enigma machine was housed in the fire-scarred warehouse a half-mile from the town; my equipment buried beneath a charred floorboard that concealed all my secrets. It was too much of a risk to keep them near me or within village limits. Searches and suspicion were common and finding even a scrap of evidence was enough to incriminate. I knew that now more than ever.

The message had been sent, the photos and package were slipped into my mailbox ready for pickup. It was there, in the rubble of that barn, I changed from my civilian clothes to the black pants and dark jacket. There was no real uniform for my kind of work, not like the army and marine uniforms that had become a common sight during my last few months in Chicago. I hadn't been able to see Miriam and Dad from the train platform through the browns and greens. Unlike in Chicago, I had an assortment of gadgets and explosives, a few of my own inventions. It was calming to have my gun and my grenades so close again, a strange comfort in their proximity. Crouched by the tree trunk, watching the soldiers mark the perimeter around the weapon, I heard my mother's voice in my head.

"Fear makes the bear bigger than he is."

The bear took the form of two soldiers, their path clearly marked. They were only two men. Small in size, I had taken bigger. They each had StG 44, something I knew how to disarm. The five-minute shift change would be in less than two minutes. I had enough time to slip through, plant my TnT, and hightail it back to the treeline. That was just the first part of the plan. I would then have to run all the way back to the barn, hide and conceal my uniform and run back to the boarding house. All without being caught.

Piece of cake. I had done several missions like this at Camp-X but there had been trainers and instructors to oversee my work. This was on my own. No one would pick up the pieces if it all went to shit.

I took a deep steadying breath and looked down at my watch. One minute. I wouldn't let it go to shit. I had no reason to worry. I shifted my boots, footprints concealed with rubber soles that were shaped to look like bare feet. Unsettling to look at but ingenious nonetheless. Madrid had an assortment of oddities and bizarre tools that were useful if not disturbing. Felix had thought it amusing to mess with the gadgets, poking fun at their bizarre disguises but I was sure, wherever he was now, he was grateful for anything that made his work easier.

30 seconds. I gathered my courage and my feet underneath me, readying my already tense muscles for the dash. The ground was damp beneath my knees. My mind wasn't on the gun before me as it should have been but on Simone's backdoor that was left unlocked for me. Would I be able to enter the garden and the house without being caught?

Glancing down at my watch one last time, I watched the hand tick to 3 am and started to creep down the slope, like a spider. The soldiers retreating backs was all the encouragement I needed to slip through the bush line and slither across the dimly lit complex to the shadow of the tarp. I ducked underneath the covering, the only sound was my heavy breathing against the metal of the weapon.

I was so close I could smell the death that would soak every inch of this gun, kill the men who were just trying to do their duty. Trying to make the world a little brighter. The thought of this gun making children fatherless and women widows was enough to steel my resolve and my fingers worked quickly to affix the TNT on the weapon and flick my lighter, illuminating the cool metal. Guns didn't discriminate but fingers behind the triggers did.

The sound of the fuse crackling sent a second wind of speed into my feet, I ducked my head back under the tarp and, looking around the complex, darted back to the tree line. I threw myself into a bush, watching as the courtyard was illuminated with the red hot flash, my whole body shaking in the explosion that followed. Shrapnel flew, slicing through buildings and trees, sending leaves falling around my ears. I didn't wait for the dust to settle, by the time the shouts were ringing and the alarm had been called, I was thirty yards away.

My route back to the barn was quick and efficient. In twenty minutes at high speed, I had made it to the skeletal remains of the structure and slid on my knees to where the rickety floorboards and hay hid a cavity that perfectly aligned itself with my need of concealment.

My fingers were trembling as I tore open the buttons of my uniform and pulled it over my panting chest. Throwing on the civilian clothes that had been the common dress, I glanced down at my watch. 3:30 am. Sighing, I allowed myself a minute to catch my breath. I opened the case of my enigma machine and laid my trembling fingers on the keys. Pausing, I formulated my thoughts.

So much had happened in the last twelve hours. Could I accurately convey it to Madrid? The clatter of the keys was deafening in the silent barn as I typed out my message. I had been burned, as the agents of the OSS liked to refer to suspicion or one's position being revealed.

Saw some fireworks. Burned. Not sure how deep. Won't be sleeping for a while. Eris.


	7. his own desires leads every man

Chicago, Illinois

December 7th, 1941

Virginia R. Carroll

I didn't think that my world would change that day. The broadcast marked the beginning of a war that I was told would never come. I was promised that fighting would never be in my future so the lessons had seemed needless. Dad had been insistent, since I was a young girl, that I would never see the horror of war. And when Allen Carroll spoke, God listened. His words were stronger than the law and his wishes almost guaranteed. But Dad must not have prayed hard enough for me. A war in December, when the streets were dusted with snow and the storefronts were red and green. No one could think of a war in December, no matter what brewed in Europe and the horizon.

December was the one month of the year that both of my parents inhabited the same city for more than a few days. Miriam would return from whatever hole in the alleyways and underground of the city she had invaded that week to the place I called home and she rarely rested her head. Dad would drag his black Ford into the driveway, parking it for longer than three days, dusty with the roads he had seen. My birthday, having just passed wasn't cause for such an occasion but the anniversary of something darker brought them back to Chicago and together.

My mother carried many burdens, weighing down her forehead and lining her cheeks, but she never breathed a word of their weight. She didn't drop them, resting her shoulders and mind, save one night of the year. The sixth day of December would find Miriam at the kitchen table, a cup of mint tea in her hand. She would sit there late into the night, long after the steam had stopped curling around her face. Dad would sit with her and I would sit on the stairs, watching their shadows flicker on the wall.

It was a ritual, a dance, and the one reprieve I had from the usual demeanor of my mother: stoic, sharp, and commanding. The one night where the lights of the kitchen would ease the lines on her face and make her seem younger, nearly erasing the scar that split her face into the two separate identities that very few knew lurked beneath. Even when Miriam had taken her desk job in the Chicago office and became a more prominent feature in my late childhood, she wouldn't crack the mask. She couldn't, save that one night. It was a ritual that I knew, after seventeen years of the same song and dance.

The morning would dawn, cold and smoky, the candles left burning in the kitchen long since extinguished by the wax. Dad would be waiting at the foot of the stairs with a cup of coffee that I really shouldn't have learned to drink dark and bitter so young and we would sit together, looking over Miriam slumped at the table. This December 6th had fallen on a Saturday and, out of habit and no religious obligation on my part, I put on the dress that wouldn't earn me glowers from the elder members and accepted the coffee as usual.

"Good morning," I muttered to Miriam whose shoulders were still slumped but her head was lifted from the wood of the table. I wracked my brain, trying to remember if this was normal behavior for December 7ths. It wasn't. This was new.

"You've been keeping up with your German?" Miriam asked. No good morning. Just straight to business.

I nodded. "Of course,"

Every night with the little primer that had seen better days.

"And the-"

"And the codes and the French and the shooting." I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. I was really getting too old for all these meaningless extracurriculars. Normal girls my age knitted or sewed. They played tennis or watched movies on the weekends. I studied ciphers and rifles. "Lawson is taking me out with the boys next Saturday."

German was the first language that Miriam taught me. It hadn't really stuck out to me as strange but Mom, back when I still called her that, had started from a young age. When I saw her between raids, she would pull me into her lap, and, instead of a storybook, she would read from a German primer. It might have been, in the years that followed the war, a way for her to preserve and cherish Germany as it had been. Her homeland had been reduced to rubble and now, the headlines didn't promise a bright future. She didn't speak of the family left in Leipzig if there was any. She didn't speak of Germany. I had spent most of my life imagining her past, who Miriam was before me, and Chicago. But all my ideas assigned a deeper emotion to Miriam than I had seen her possess. Every move she made was calculated and nothing in her seemed to miss anything.

"I don't want you to lose your German, Virginia," Miriam continued as if she hadn't heard me. She rarely did. "I want you to be well-rounded."

Well-rounded meant more German and now French. There were days that she would only speak to me in either language, usually when Dad was gone on a long work trip, just the two of us. When I couldn't find a word or if I didn't know how to respond, I would fall silent, burning under her icy glare. I would go days in silence, the two of us too stubborn to break.

I glanced at Dad, who just stared deep into his coffee, his own brow furrowed. This was different too. We never talked about Miriam's lessons on a Sunday. We never talked about them in front of Dad, either.

"I will come with you," Miriam said. "You will need to know how to shoot."

"I do," I said. "And Lawson is already taking me."

When I was still young and malleable, Miriam would load me into the car and drive up to the shooting range in Michigan. She had her FBI coworkers, show me how to shoot, firing at dummies and targets. The cool metal had felt strange against the softness of my skin, which would grow calloused and dry in due time. The kickback from the first gunshot had sent my teeth rattling. The sweet smell of Mom's perfume was soft but her arms encasing me and steadying my body was like a vice. She imprisoned me with nothing to do but pull the trigger.

I wasn't a kid anymore.

"You need to be ready-" Miriam started to say but I cut her off.

"For church?" I said. "Look at the time! We'll talk later."

I tossed my mug of cold coffee into the sink, letting the ceramic clatter and, undoubtedly, shatter. I let my father's black Ford rumble me towards the heart of Chicago, past drifts of dirty snow and the few who dared wander in the cold. All the people around me seemed too normal to be breathing the same air as I did. How did I miss the experiences of the girls my own age?

I let Dad lead me into the building, and saw the familiar head of black hair. I slipped into the pew beside her, our usual spot, and muttered good morning. Mollie White had been a cornerstone in my childhood, a place of warm comfort and Sunday afternoons at a loud, boisterous table. Aunt Mollie had wanted me to stay more often, spend weekends with her brood, but Miriam had never agreed. Part of me wondered if she didn't want me to grow up as Lydia and Clay had. Maybe Miriam preferred a protege to a child.

We managed to see each other on Sundays when Dad dragged me to the churchyard to be instructed by the so wise and holy parishioner. If I was to be a little killer, I had to be a Godly one.

"Ginny, love, how are you?" Aunt Mollie's smile was brighter than the sun. The White siblings lived up to their name, sharing the same wide toothy grins that set everyone around them at ease. They used it to their benefit, providing a distraction for whatever mischief they got up to. Their smiles were known to divert the attention from the smoking craters where garden sheds once stood and set the blazing fury of a deacon to a simmer.

Lydia, the eldest at two years older than I, jammed her way beside me on the pew, pushing Clay, (fourteen), and Davis (eighteen) out of her path, such was her seniority.

"Has Mrs. Carroll been acting strange?" Lydia hissed. No good morning. No greeting, straight to the point. That was Lydia White. She leaped headfirst into everything life threw at her and got through unscathed. If she hadn't been the only thing closely resembling a friend to me I would have wished Miriam had chosen her as her fledgling apprentice.

That was a trick question, I concluded. My mother was always acting strange.

"I'm going to need a little more to go on," I said, shuffling over so my father could sit next to me on the now crowded pew. "Define strange for me,"

"Does she have a funny way of knowing when bad things are about to happen?"Lydia continued. "Dad says he can feel it in his bones. like the change in the weather."

Lawson White had been Miriam's colleague in the Bureau of prohibition and later the FBI but their connection went farther back, to Lawson's service in France and Belgium and my own mother's work in the war. They shared a bond, several scars, and the darkness in their eyes, though Lawson hid it behind a smile. Lydia had spent hours begging for the story but he wouldn't crack and I never dared ask Miriam. One of the many mysteries that Miriam hid beneath the mask.

"Can Mrs. Carroll do that too?" Lydia asked. Her brown eyes were wide and eager. I wasn't sure why this mattered.

I shrugged. "I think she's just pessimistic."

And yet, she had asked about my German studies on December 7th. She never did that. The seventh day of December was my one respite from whatever cavity Miriam was trying to fill, whatever great enemy I was being trained for.

"Who's pessimistic?" Dad asked, suddenly.

I jumped, almost forgetting he was beside me. "Don't worry about it,"

Lydia settled herself against the pew, gluing herself firmly to my other side, not satisfied with my answer but I wasn't about to talk about my mother's paranoia in earshot of my father.

"Hey Dad," I said, loudly as the organ began to play. "Did you hear that Lydia is going to college in Cincinnati?"

"Congratulations, Lydia," Dad muttered.

"Thanks, Uncle Al," Lydia said, beaming.

"Hey, Lydia, why don't you tell Uncle Al about the nursing program they have at St. Anthony's-"

We stood, for the first hymn and Dad raised a hand, silencing me. This was something I had been pushing for, the one thing I would fight the immovable force of my mother for. Rifles, pistols, and codebooks pushed to the side forever. Preparing for a war that would never come had to stop.

"You keep talking in church and the Catholics won't take you," Dad whispered.

"Very funny," I rolled my eyes, letting the melody of the organ's notes rattle around in my mind.

"And you aren't going to Cincinnati anytime soon," He sounded so sure. and was that a touch of fear in his tone? Allen Carroll didn't show fear. At least, not to me.

"It's not like I'm going anywhere else," I muttered.

None of this was right. Nothing felt right, as I left my father in the pew after the final prayer had been said, and piled into the backseat of the White family car like I did every Sunday. Crammed between Clay and Davis, my skin crawled with the feeling of familiarity coupled with unease. This was all wrong.

Everyone was breaking from their usual script. Lydia didn't talk about the building tension in Europe over the bowl of rolls as she did now. Lawson, who I had never called uncle after a lifetime of knowing him, was predicting some great shift with the smile gone from his lips. Clay wanted to fight and Mollie looked as if she would be the first to throw a blow. Davis sat back, poking at his food as the table whirled with discussion as it was wont to do at the White's residence. I had been given brutal training in the way of survival at family dinners and backyard games, something I had never experienced in my own home but even that intensive course hadn't covered this feeling. The radio was blaring music, the talk was buzzing in my head, and I couldn't abandon the idea that something wasn't right. My mother wanted to know if I had been keeping up with my German. Lydia wanted to talk about my mother. This wasn't how December 7th was supposed to play out.

The seventeen Decembers I had seen rise and fall were like clockwork to my mind and body. The seventeenth year of the seventh day of the twelfth month. I knew the pattern. I knew the song and dance. I had learned the steps. But Mollie wasn't smiling serenely as she should have been, laughing her booming laugh. Lawson didn't poke jokes at his children with a brightness that I never saw reflected in my mother's eye despite their shared past. Clay wasn't feeding the dog scraps. Davis wasn't kicking Lydia under the table. Lydia was, at least, turning up the radio to try and block out the noise.

The radio didn't help. It was the final piece, the grain of sand that tipped the scale and firmly settled the impending feeling of unfamiliarity in my stomach.

"The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor from the air and all naval and military activities on the island of Oahu, principal American base in the Hawaiian islands."

I wasn't supposed to see a war in my lifetime. All those prayers must have disintegrated in the atmosphere, falling short of God's ears and dusting my head and shoulders. This was wrong. This was all wrong.

"Lawson?" Mollie wasn't bright, cheerful, or blazing with fire. She was dampened by this tide of emotions; a smoking, charred remnant of Mollie White. She was shocked but I wasn't.

"Dad, what does this mean?" Davis asked.

"Are we at war?" Clay said, too eagerly.

"Dad, what's going on?" Lydia's voice trembled.

Lawson, ever-commanding with his presence, raised one hand. Voices died in throats. He didn't meet his wife's eyes or any of his children's worried faces. He didn't provide them assurance or explanation. He looked at me. And in his eyes, I didn't see Agent White or even Lawson. His mask had fallen away, knocked off by the commotion. He looked like he had fought the same war that my mother had.

"Virginia," He said, slowly, calmly. "You need to go home."


	8. Give the devil his due

Sainte Marie-Du-Mont, Normandy, France

April 1944 - June 1944

I waited for a reply until dawn.

My eyes were growing heavy, my head leaning against the prickly wood-paneled wall, trying to fight off sleep. It was the kind of dreamlike state that sent everything into blurred shades of grey and numb thoughts spiraling into the deepest parts of your mind. Splinters dug into my back and I pressed further into them, trying to keep my eyes open and mind alert but I was so exhausted, it didn't matter. I could have been stormed by the Gestapo themselves and I wouldn't have looked up. It was a dangerous state to be in but I couldn't help it. The pink skies were brightening between my eyelashes, sending rays of soft yellow light across the fields when the keys of my enigma started to whir. Sitting upright, I let my spine straighten, wincing in the sudden sharp pain of my muscles. With bated breath, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, watching as my reply was delivered.

Extraction in works. Stay low. - A

Damn.

There was too much stacked against me. I had been dealt a rough hand and it wasn't looking brighter. The Germans wouldn't have to look hard to find me, they were halfway there already. A photo, that lacked a full view of my face and now, not twenty-four hours after I had been questioned, one of the biggest weapons in their arsenal had been eliminated. It was sloppy work but I had been backed into a corner. I had thrown away most of the training and neglected common sense. The Germans weren't stupid. They would know who I was, even if it took them a minute or two.

I had to admit defeat. I had to ask for extraction. That was a mark of failure to an agent. A part of me wanted to be pulled immediately, to get the hell out of here before the Germans figured out who I was. That was the Ginny side of me, the seventeen-year-old girl who had been offered up like a lamb for slaughter. But Eris, the agent who had trained for this and who had agreed to be the killer she had become, knew what my duty and my orders were. I had already failed the OSS by needing to be extracted. I had to do my job and I would stay in Sainte Marie Du Mont until I was pulled. Even if I wanted to run away.

My mind whirled as I tossed the paper into the metal burn barrel I had rested my head against and lit a match. I had been trained to be ready for anything, extraction or discovery, but as anticipation and suspicions grew, I wasn't sure how much longer Eris could be concealed. Eris was a commanding presence, inciting confrontation and conflict. I would be hard to hide.

Days turned into weeks as I waited for the extraction that Madrid had promised. I laid low, as low as one could in a small town occupied by Germans. I made arrangements for Simone's children to be sent away, not bearing the thought of the blame laying on my shoulders should something happen to them I wouldn't be able to live with myself. I had seen Simone sob on the back step when I told her, weeping over her children's lives that could be easily used as bargaining chips in this bluff we found ourselves in. I was a good liar but lies often took collateral damage when they fell. I didn't want anything to happen to them so we arranged with a fellow resistance fighter to smuggle them out of the country.

Simone kissed her children good-bye in the dead of one April night. I held their hands as I walked them to the edge of town over the cover of night, passing their cold fingers over to the waiting palms of the resistance fighter. I almost whispered a prayer as I watched them go as if I was in a cathedral under the eyes of the stone-cold saints and not in the fields of Normandy beneath the stars. That was the last time I saw Max, Linette, and Little Lillie Gachot, in war or peace.

April slipped away, the Germans still bringing in weapons though nothing on the scale of the Flak that I had taken out of action but the guards had been doubled. I would have liked to destroy the whole garrison but that was a little too conspicuous, considering the thin ice I now stood upon. Rolls of film were a thing of the past, replaced with anticipation and breathless fear. I didn't sleep much, plagued by the memory of cold fingers in my hands and the swirling smooth silk around my legs as I whirled to the song of my own discovery.

As May dawned, there was still the anticipation in the air, I could feel it wherever I went, which wasn't far these days. The Germans had taken my roost upon the bell tower in the church and were swarming the streets, their sentries watching day and night. Tensions were growing, searches more frequent. Simone and I were secluded in our house, hardly leaving. I sat outside in the garden, watching the skies, trying to find a sign in the clouds or the stars. A sign that whatever was coming was a good thing, that my extraction would be soon.

As May closed, the tensions in Sainte-Marie-Du-Mont were as suffocating as the fog that choked the streets. I had taken a risk by bringing my equipment from the skeletal barn, wishfully thinking that it would be difficult to fetch my equipment in case of sudden news. I was anxious to hear from Madrid and the thought of the Germans finding the equipment and intercepting a message made me concerned enough to hide it all in the attic of Simone's home, behind a loose panel. If I was caught, I would lose it all but I had calculated the risk and I was willing to take it.

On the 1st of June, 20:00, the sky darker than the black cloth of my OSS Special Ops uniform hidden in the depths of my pack, I slipped up to the attic after dinner and sat by the enigma machine, waiting. This had become a ritual, every evening for weeks now with no luck or news but I continued to go. I had to keep the routine for fear of missing something. Missing a small piece of information.

I had been lulled by the sound of Simone washing the dishes, listening to her radio. I hadn't slept through the night in weeks and had spent my days in a constant state of anxiety-driven anticipation. Soft French crooned up the stairs and through the floorboards, soothing me into an almost dreamlike state when the clattering of the machine jolted me awake. Through the light of the streetlamps that trickled in through a low window, I read the message.

Extraction Imminent. Charlie. -A

I had no idea what Charlie meant but my heart soared with the thought of being withdrawn soon. After two months, I had started to think they had forgotten about me. It wasn't uncommon for agents not to understand messages. If we didn't understand the meaning at first, it would pass unnoticed by the Germans and we would be all the better for it. I burned the paper, slipped the equipment back into hiding, and made my way back downstairs.

I had just locked the door to the attic when there was a knock, nay a fist, upon the front door. Peering out the nearest window, I saw two figures and a car idling in the street. My stomach felt like a bag of rocks, dragging me down. I sped down the hallway, trying to reach the door before Simone opened it but only made it to the landing before she stepped aside to let the two men in.

Looking up at me was Captain Wagner, the man who had first removed me from the square, and a thin private who looked as if his rifle was much too heavy for his sapling-like body. I wasn't thrilled to see my old friend again or this new face. House calls from soldiers didn't bode well, in my experience.

"Good evening," I said, joining them in the hall as if this was just a social call. I had to keep some level of fear in my eyes or they would be suspicious but I knew that this day would come; I had been anticipating it for weeks.

They had not responded to my niceties, instead, the captain gruffly said, "Ms. Leblanc, we need to take you in for questioning."

I wasn't afraid of being caught or any of the things that went along with it. It was a possibility that was always hanging in the back of my mind. I had made peace with it over the two months of waiting but, looking over at Simone's frightened eyes, something did stir inside me. Catching her gaze, I gave her a reassuring smile and in the squeeze of my hand in her own, a message. If I don't come back, get a message to Madrid and destroy my equipment.

She would know what to do.

"Very well," I said, my hands trembling as I offered my wrists to them. They would think it was fear but the adrenaline was already rushing through my veins like white-water rapids of a mountain river.

I had gone boating with Davis and Lydia once. We were tossed about like a ship in an ocean storm. The current was swift and wanted to carry you wherever it wished, fighting it would only lead to exhaustion and drowning. I knew, like that river, I would have to allow these Germans to do their will. I would wait until the cards were in my favor before I could fight back. They hooded me, which was expected. In the stuffy confines of the wool bag, I formulated my plan of action. I didn't want to be hunted. I knew I had two options in the interrogation that was sure to follow. Well, three really, I said to myself.

One, I could fight them off. Two, I could tell them what I knew. This wasn't an option, no matter how dire the circumstances. But there was an out that every agent had been given. A rubber molar embedded in my gum, and smooth beneath my tongue, that hid a small white pill. I had three options but I would never speak. So I could kill them or I could end my life. And I wasn't ready to die yet.

In the confines of that hood, my breath hot and suffocating, I knew Miriam wouldn't have panicked. She was an immovable force. But I knew that Miriam wouldn't have a place in my mind. I shuddered. The OSS hadn't trained Miriam. The OSS hadn't sent Miriam to Normandy. They had sent me.

"Show us what you can do,"

I had been chosen for this mission, for this name because of what I could do. Adonis wanted me to show the OSS what I was capable of.I wouldn't speak. I wouldn't I had to die, it would be because of my silence. My mission, fellow agents, my country would not suffer on my account. I had been given a mission and I would see it through to the end.

I was wrestled out of the car and through my hood, I could taste the salty breeze of the ocean. We were at the German's outpost just outside of town but the night wind was sending sea spray from the east. I had spent many nights surveilling its movements, the comings, and goings of the guard but I had never entered its concrete confines.

Down several steps, I stumbled, into a musty smelling room that reeked of pipe smoke and metal before the hood was ripped from my face. I blinked, allowing my eyes to adjust to the dim lamplight of the room.

It wasn't the brig as I had expected. I had assumed I would be thrown into a cell, under watch and under lock and key while they gauged my likeness to that of the photograph. I would be questioned in my cell. That's what I had expected. But I didn't expect to be escorted to an officer's room, a long sand table with German positions below a wall full of maps, headquarters marked and the German line penciled in. Behind a desk, covered in papers was the officer himself.

He looked like every other officer I had seen, and I had been around many of them during my time as a child of two government agents. They were all the same: harsh faces, chest bedecked with ribbons and bits of tin that proclaimed loudly years of dedicated service. I rested my feet more comfortably on the cool concrete floor, not intimidated by this man's medals or expression. I had met many an American like him, what difference did a German make?

"Sir," The captain said in German, clapping into a salute before pushing me closer to the desk. "This is Leblanc."

"Guten Abend, Fraulein Leblanc," The officer said, his sleeve declaring him an Oberst or a Colonel. Why an Oberst was in the field, in the basement of a garrison, I had no idea. I must have been more of a bother to the Germans than I had thought. "Or perhaps you wish to be called Eris?"

I wasn't surprised that he knew my codename. Agents weren't surprised. But I allowed myself to be taken aback that they already knew I was Eris.

Roll with the punches, I thought and smiled. "Whichever you would prefer, sir."

"So you do not deny the title of 'Eris'?" He asked, speaking in French but I knew he was just doing it to toy with me. I shrugged, this man was good but I had been taught how to stay ahead of people. To think a moment before they did. Felix thought this way often and provided little in way of explanation. To think in terms of survival was something I had learned in his training and something I carried with me.

"You seem convinced," I said. My arms were still in handcuffs, stuck behind my back.

"We are not convinced, miss," The officer said, tossing a photo across the desk.

I looked down. It had been taken at the same time as the previous photo. I was now able to place a time, the off-the-shoulder dress of my first mission on European soil looked just as rich and fine on print as it had been in person. Paris 1942. I had been on my way to Normandy, to my new position as a sleeper agent. Where they had gotten these shots, I had no idea. I had been told to pass off information to a group of resistance fighters in Paris. I hadn't been alone. Felix and Keres had been with me and I had done my job. It had been a success, no one knew I was there. It had been that success and the intelligence I had passed had only left one mark in my notebook. One mark. The first mark.

"But you deny that this is you?"

The birthmark upon my collarbone was very prominent in this photo and it burned beneath my shirt, searing the cotton. I merely looked at the photo for a heartbeat longer before meeting his gaze. I didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. The captain shifted behind me.

"I'm sure," The colonel pressed, not taking my silence as an ample answer. "That if we opened your shirt now, we would find this birthmark."

He nodded to his captain, who stepped forward and ripped open my blouse, buttons clattering to the ground. The cool air sent my skin prickling in gooseflesh, as the soldier pulled the shirt wide enough to show my birthmark. I didn't care that my brazier was now on full display, I was too concentrated on my fingers' work behind my back. I cautiously worked my knife -the blade that was always concealed in the waistband of my trousers- free behind my back.

"Well, Eris, Berlin will be quite happy to see you." The colonel put the photo back into a folder, all the evidence he needed now before him. "I'm sure you will receive a warm welcome."

With the captain close, his weak points were open for attack. I took my chance, digging my elbow deep into his exposed side, feeling his rib crack beneath the blow. I had been waiting for the perfect window and I had been given one, however short. I needed to turn the cards in my favor.

Every second of the drill sergeant's training in hand to hand combat came flooding back to me. He had screamed them at me for my entirety in Camp X and I had grown so used to his constant criticism that it was almost comforting to hear him in my mind telling me that my form was shit. With all the strength I could muster, I buried my elbow deeper into his side, feeling his breath in a loud exhale on my neck. As I twisted out of his grasp, I kicked his knee hearing it snap loudly. Seeing the small private approach like a frightened animal, I pulled my knife free and drove it into his stomach before kicking his groin with the toe of my boot. I pulled my knees through my arms. Though still bound by metal and lock, I could at least brandish a weapon in front of me.

Now for the Colonel. This man was much bigger than I, but so had every other man at Camp X and I had managed just fine. I pulled one of the croupier rakes off the sand table and delivered three sharp blows to the officer's midsection before cracking it soundly across his head. He crumpled to the floor.

I knelt beside the captain, looking for his weapon and the keys to my restraints. I knew getting out of this compound would be a nightmare and the cool feeling of the pistol's grip in my newly freed hand eased some of the panic I could feel rising in my chest. Knowing that no one who knew that Eris was in France could live, I took my knife and slit every throat. The blood sprayed across my hand, hot and sticky.

Don't look at the faces, don't look at the blood.

Tucking the knife back into my waistband, I grabbed the photos and stuffed them into my brazier before buttoning up my blouse. My cover would surely be blown now, even if no one knew I was Eris, I would still be known as the girl who killed three of their own.

With hot, sticky blood in one hand and a cold pistol in the other, I took a steadying breath. I had to hide. And I had to get a message to Madrid. Looking down at the three bodies scattered on the floor around me, I sighed softly. That had been sloppy.

Better luck next time.


	9. Debrief - File #1

Operative Enyo: Dismissal report.

Recorded by Captain E. M. Gold. January 9th, 1919.

\- transcribed by Agent Ida L.M Hale - September 3rd, 1945.

-audio relinquished to OSS 05/19/45

Audio File #1

Enyo:

"I would say it's nice to see you again but lying has become a habit of mine. Forgive me as I try to break it."

Gold:

"State your name for the record,"

Enyo:

"Don't you know my name by now?"

Gold:

"For the record, Enyo,"

Enyo:

"Enyo. Operative for the SIS."

Gold:

"Your civilian name,"

Enyo:

"Can't bear to say it?"

Gold:

"I don't want to say anything to you."

Enyo:

"This will be a long dismissal then,"

Gold:

"I'll try to keep it brief. Why-"

Enyo:

"I'm so sorry to interrupt but what am I supposed to call you?"

Gold:

"Captain or sir will be fine."

Enyo:

"I see,"

Gold:

"You joined the SIS in 1914. Why?"

Enyo:

"I needed money. They needed native German speakers. My brother wasn't providing for the family so I thought I'd leave him to look after things for a few months while I went off to war."

Gold:

"You chose to be an operative in a war, as a woman?"

Enyo:

"Wars have a funny way of finding people who don't want them. You don't get much of a say in the matter."

Transcription notes

*audio unclear from 1:25 to 1:55. Transcription continues during next available audio.

-ILMH

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> While audio recording was still in its early stages, the gramophone and other period typical equipment could record sound. The first recording of a human voice was in 1877 and music had been recorded since then, so while it is unlikely we would have a full recording such as this, it is not entirely impossible. Let's call it a historical loophole


	10. like mother, like daughter

Chicago, Illinois

April 1942

My walk home and the minutes, hours, and months thereafter continued to perpetuate the dread that had settled into my stomach. My presence upon returning to the house hadn't eased my mother's frantic smoking and, when the bottle of gin had been released from the cupboard, I excused myself upstairs. She was angry, hands shaking, but I wasn't sure if it directed at me or the world around us.

Dad's eyes were haunted, showing a war and scars that I often forgot he had fought in. He never let the trenches show on his face, carved between his eyes and cheeks but now they were visible, harsh, and brutal. Sitting on the top of the stairs like I should have done on December 7th, I watched the eighth day of December slide into darkness and before long, December bled into January. None of this was supposed to be happening. none of it should have happened. The war, the fear, and my own Pearl Harbor continued into early spring.

My own Pearl Harbor proved to be the final blow to what little of a relationship I had with my mother, blowing it into smithereens. The tension and the suppressed emotion on both sides caught like pitch and it wasn't long until we avoided each other like the plague, not ready to send smoke into the air once again. I had never understood what my mother had done during those four years in Germany, where she had met Lawson, and where she had been given marring scars. I wasn't meant to understand, or even to know, as she kept everything under lock and key. The little pieces that I had was a tattered German primer, a hamsa that strung tight around my neck like a noose, and a codebook, stained and inscribed with the name of a girl I had never met: Sadie Goldschmidt.

Mothers, in my limited experience, were usually caring and nurturing figures. Warm hugs, soft handkerchiefs, and delicate hands. My mother wasn't like that. She was all rough, calloused hands and gruff words mixed with cigarette smoke and booze. My earliest memory is of listening to the door to our house shut and her keys hit the table. It was late, she hadn't come up to say good night and she was gone the next morning. On good days, when the raids had gone well, she slipped into my room smelling of speakeasy cigars and booze and said good night. When raids went south, I would listen for those keys to know she was safe. She was private, even to her own daughter. I knew she had grown up in Leipzig, Germany. I knew that she never called herself German. She was British, she said, or American. She didn't speak of siblings, she didn't speak of how she got to Britain. She didn't speak of a lot of things. For Miriam Carroll, the four years between 1914 and 1918 didn't exist, blotted from her mind and our family conversation.

The key to the secrets Miriam kept close to her chest wasn't found in my own home but in an escort to a door and the ringing of the telephone.

It was very rare that Lydia called me in my own home. We were friends of circumstance, brought together by family ties and the fierce poker competitions between my father and Aunt Mollie.

"Watch out," She started off, ominously. "Black suits left our place."

This was something Lawson and Dad had been warned of. Whispers of a new government branch, an intelligence office that would train and deploy agents had been a constant since December. it would only make sense that they would employ experienced agents to their offices. Lawson White was one of the best agents in Chicago, maybe even the Midwest. He had been interim director of the Chicago office and had, with Miriam, been on fire in the '20s, filling up cells nightly. Lawson White was good. Of course they would want him.

"What did he say?"

"He refused. Said they needed him on the home front." I could hear Lydia rolling her eyes. "Don't know why they even bothered."

"Lawson is one of the best. DC must have spoken highly of him."

It was more than that. I had been sitting on Lawson's words for nearly four months. He had walked me to the door, insisting he made sure I was safely down the street, as if I didn't live five minutes away. I had reached for the doorknob and he had grabbed my arm.

"Miriam didn't want you to know,"

"Then don't tell me," I had said. This man was the closest thing to family I had on my mother's side, a fixed point in my memory as a child. He knew Miriam's anger.

"She didn't want you to know because she didn't think you would ever have to see what she did,"

"What could she have seen?" I asked. "She lived in London during the war."

"We had to shut Clay up in his room so he didn't try and enlist right then and there. Anyway, " Lydia continued, ignoring my silence and plowing onward. "Just wanted to warn you. They'll be coming for Allen next."

"Right," I said. Of course they would be coming for us next. Of course they would come, the vultures in suits, to perch themselves on our sofa next but it wouldn't be my father they had come to collect. "Right, thanks."

I would later learn that the black suits belonged to representatives of the COI, known to me as the OSS. they were the final piece, the match to my oil spill. The doorbell rang and I opened it, the heat of the April day burning my cheeks.

"Is this the Carroll residence?"

Sometimes, when trying to chase sleep on the hard military cots or watching the lights of the German patrols flood in from the streets and reflect on the ceiling of my attic bedroom, I would imagine how different my life would have been if I had slammed the door in their harsh, cold faces.

"Allen Carroll isn't home," I had said, though I knew they weren't coming for my father.

"Virginia? What are you doing?" My mother appeared behind me and for once, I was relieved at her presence.

"Mrs. Miriam Carroll?" the first man said. "We've been sent to speak with you. You come highly recommended by Captain White."

Miriam had sat them down in our living room before I could blink, their foreheads glistening in the heat that was plaguing Chicago this April. I hung back in the doorway, gripping the newspaper I had been perusing in my palms. She had offered them water and as she went to retrieve the glasses, I glanced them up and down. She never welcomed strangers into our home so readily but these vultures must have meant something. They were almost too secretive, it was obvious. Black suits, one had a briefcase. Their hair was close-cropped and they held themselves like ex-soldiers, stiff as a board. Miriam returned before they noticed I had followed them into the room, and as she distributed the clear glasses of ice water with little lemon wedges, she beckoned me to sit down.

I slipped into the room and perched on the edge of the nearest armchair. One of the men, with steely gray eyes and harsh lines on his face, cleared his throat. "I'm sorry ma'am, but this is a confidential subject."

Miriam smiled a smile as icy as the now perspiring glasses of lemon water. "Captain Kingston, Virginia is my daughter. I can assure you that she is the face of discretion."

It was a promise to them but a warning to me. I stayed but I was quiet.

"As we said, you come highly recommended from Captain White," Captain Kingston said. "I confess, during our first sweep of the files we didn't find anything dedicated to your work."

"Your mother was a great informant in Germany during the Great War,"

"I wouldn't imagine so," Miriam said.

"Allow us to explain what we hope to achieve,"

"That won't be necessary," Miriam said. "I understand perfectly. We are in a war, Captain, and it isn't my first."

"She was infallible. When I met her in France in '15," Lawson had trailed away, his eyes glistening in the memory. "She was incredible."

"How did she get her scar?"

"Knife. Spa, Belgium."

"With the war in Europe, we were instructed to put together some experienced and trustworthy candidates to work with our new intelligence division."

Placing his cup on the side table, he extended a manila folder across the coffee table, saying. "With your experience, as detailed by Captain Laurence White in the Great War, you would, of course, be accepted without question. Inside this folder is the training and overview, detailed."

I glanced at the folder as Miriam withdrew a glossy paper that oozed authority. She looked down her nose at it, the same nose we shared, rather unimpressed. If this was the same offer they had made Lawson, Miriam would, of course, decline. Anyone with two eyes and a half a minute spent in Miriam's company could see she preferred running wild in Chicago.

"You are asking me to spy again?" Miriam asked

This didn't seem to register with their intelligence and discretion programmed minds. They stared, blankly at her for a few moments, trying to process the very Miriam way she had phrased it.

"Your mother entered the war as one person, Ginny. Who she is now is because of what she's seen."

"In a manner of speaking," The second man, dark hair, a shadow across his scalp, spluttered. "We prefer to think of it as an operative, carefully monitored by local chapters-"

Miriam cut him off with a hand, ceasing his chatter with the simple gesture. "My time in Germany was many years ago. I've already fought my war, sir,"

Miriam had prepared me for years, bullets and conjugated verbs marking her paranoia that one day, her war wouldn't be the last fight she had seen. While my father had been insistent, using prayer and wishful thinking to keep the failing diplomacy at bay, Miriam had known that being prepared for the worst would serve me better. I hadn't seen it then but now I did. I reached for the nearest object, something to hold as I reeled in comprehension. That day's paper was perched on the arm of the chair and I snatched it up, rolling it up tight as if swatting at my future would keep it at bay. My palms were so sweaty that I was sure if I dropped the paper, the headline would be stained on my hands, ink declaring war in the Pacific.

Lawson had shown rather than told of Miriam's time in the war. the pride and fragment of fear that had shown in his eye was enough to tell me that my mother had every reason to prepare me. I had never questioned why my mother knew as much as she did. She was Miriam Carroll and that was enough. I wasn't really her daughter, more of a doll. A protege to shape and mold. By sixteen I was her little agent. It was a testament to her own ability that she had taught me so much.

"We could use your skills, Mrs. Carroll,"

"I do not accept."

My mother had never been the most patriotic American. Miriam wasn't devoted to much of anything. The hamsa that had been given to me on my sixteenth birthday was not tied to a devotion or practice of faith. there wasn't an ounce of commitment to anything that walked the Earth in Miriam's bones except for the personal battle she waged in this city and her own mind. She was made to fight and yet she said her war was over. Her war was over.

Shit.

I had let the newspaper fall to the floor as the two representatives tried to plead with masculine dignity to the stonewall that was my mother.

"I'm sorry, gentleman," she said, not looking at all sorry. "I am retired."

"Great, now we are going back with one kid and no Carroll," the steely man mumbled under his breath.

"But I can offer you a replacement, to go in my stead." I gave her the barest shake of my head but Mom plowed on with the tact of a tank, ignoring my refusal.

"A replacement, ma'am?" The steely man looked at my mother in confusion who nodded, pleased.

"My daughter, Virginia."

They turned and looked at me. I tried not to look scared half-to death like I hadn't just been reading of the rising death count of US soldiers.

"We were told of you, ma'am," The dark-haired man said but exchanged a look with his companion. It seemed the wrong Carroll was better than no Carroll.

"She is fluent in French and German, a superb markswoman. I trained her in codes and hand to hand combat." Miriam said. "I taught her everything I know."

That seemed to win over the dark-haired one but Captain Kingston didn't seem convinced. I kicked the fallen newspaper under my seat and tried to sit tall under the steely-eyed gaze. I had been told my whole life that war would never find me, wrapping me in its cold clammy hands as it did now. Prayer and preparation didn't slow its course. Destiny didn't seem to care.

"Her father is Captain Carroll, of the 20th field artillery?" He asked. My fists curled tightly in my lap. I wasn't a prize-winning animal with a pedigree but he seemed satisfied to see me as such when my mother nodded.

"We'll have to discuss with our Commander but it is a possibility." Kingston turned to me, asking. "How old are you?"

I was seventeen but something in Mom's eyes made me change my response.

"Eighteen."

I would be. In June.

"Well, Ms. Carroll," the men rose, I followed suit, staring up at them as they towered over me. I felt very small, very very small. "We'll be in touch."

I shook their hands with my ink-stained palms.

"That is," the Captain turned before leaving. "If this is what you want?"

I wiped that morning's headlines off my hands and onto my pants. Duty, Sacrifice. That was all anyone talked about these days. Men, with less experience and training than I, were being killed. While I sat at home, with years of my mother's grooming and instruction, doing nothing.

"What did Miriam see? What did she do?"

"She saved lives, Virginia. Just remember that."

It wasn't nursing. It wasn't what I wanted, deep down. It wasn't my war but I could save lives.

I looked up at the man, the match to my tinderbox, and nodded. "That's what I want."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for joining us on the first half of Pregaming D-Day. I hope you all enjoyed your stay. I am updating on a more fluid basis this time around. Once I have finished the rest of Part One's edits, I will be posting them in one batch. So to keep notified, please feel free to bookmark or subscribe to the story! I haven't changed much of Ginny's story thus far but I hope you enjoyed the little peek into her past and the new expansions that I'm doing. Consider Casus Belli the A Little Discord expansion pack :D


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